How can Identity Theft Protection Services Help You

By Amanda RandellPublished: Friday, April 2nd, 2010

Be aware. You may have been a victim of identity theft and not even know it. This article would help you to be vigilant and to give an idea about identity theft protection. The crime of identity theft is often undetectable. Through your personal information like your social security number, credit card information, date of birth or your address, criminals can now open bank accounts in your name.

You will only discover that you are already an identity theft victim if you are turned down for a loan or rejected in a job interview due to bad records on your credit rating that you did not commit. And worst is, the longer you did not detect any fraudulent activity using your personal information, more financial losses even psychological pain can affect you.

Identity theft protection lies in your hand. Take note of these dreadful consequences once your identity is stolen. Besides from leaving you feeling vulnerable and angry, you may need to spend hundred amounts of dollars to clear up your name. You would also spend the same hours trying to clear out your reputation.

You may also be wrongly caught for fraud and sent to prison because of crimes you did not ever commit.

Being a victim of identity theft would require you to clear your name by filing reports to the police and government agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission. You must also close your recent bank accounts and replace your credit cards. These processes would take you a lot of work and years to accomplish it.

Bear in mind as an identity theft protection, victims of identity theft are more likely to happen! But in spite of these, you can help you self and some agencies could also lend you their help.

These are some ways you can do prevent thieves from stealing your identity. You can sign up with a credit monitoring service. With this, you can know immediately if someone steals your identity. They can guide you to fix it. However you should also do an extra work. You still have to do a lot of phone calls write letters to banks and other financial institutions alerting them to the fraud, and pay all the costs associated with this.

There are also some services that offer not only monitoring your credit but also took steps to prevent fraud in the first place. This type of service employs an identity theft protection to the customers. The company places alerts on your credit report, so that financial and insurance companies must contact you before they do anything with your file, such as create new financial accounts, apply for mortgages and loans or issue new credit cards in your name.

As an identity theft protection, some companies would also constantly remove your junk mail and preapproved credit card lists marketing databases. Through these services, you would not spend all the time on the phone. These services would provide you a team of investigators, account credit specialist and lawyers to protect you.

These services can protect you from becoming a victim of identity theft. You can get on with your life with their help.